Across Southeast Asia, interest in German is on the rise as the German government taps increasing numbers of the region's skilled workers to tackle the country's severe labor shortages.

Thailand has been lauded for the progressive legislation it has passed into law which ensures that women and girls have the right to a range of sexual and reproductive health services, but many teenagers struggle to access the care they need. The UN Population Fund (UNFPA) has been working with organizations in the South East Asian country to make sure those young people receive the support they are entitled to.

Southeast Asia is home to the third-largest expanse of tropical rainforest in the world, making it a pivotal region for global efforts to address the biodiversity crisis and climate change. But intense development pressure and global consumption are transforming the region’s landscapes, fragmenting forests, degrading waterways and depleting the natural resources on which countless species and millions of people depend.

LOMBOK, Indonesia — Suhardi, 43, glides across a technicolor coral garden. Freediving down to the seafloor, he scoops up a handful of sand that he sprinkles over the reef. The reef becomes a blur of color as reef fish scurry from all four corners to see what delicacies can be found among the falling grains.

This guest blog, by Prof. Edwin Wieringa of Cologne University, How Old is the Language of Young Malay Manuscripts?

A note on the unusual Malay reflexive phrase bertunjukkan diri(nya), turns the spotlight on a phrase in of one of the oldest Malay texts, ‘Tales of the Wise Parrot’.

One of the world’s largest palm oil companies appears to have overseen a network of companies responsible for deforestation of tens of thousands of hectares, according to a new investigation published by The Gecko Project, a London-based investigative journalism organization. Indonesian conglomerate First Resources, like many agribusinesses, has announced voluntary commitments to guarantee no new […]

The two books of this review article are valuable contributions to the history of racial theorizing in the colonial setting, in this case the Malay peninsula (Manickam) and the Dutch East Indies (Sysling).

https://asianethnology.org/articles/2227

POLEWALI MANDAR, Indonesia — Over the past three decades, the residents of Mampie village have watched their homes and farmland vanish from the west coast of Indonesia’s Sulawesi Island. A grove of orange trees collapsed into the sea some time ago. Buffalo no longer cool off in muddy sumps by the beach. “It’s gone,” Darwis, […]

Content warning: Act of Killing movie details

Went out to Seafood City for my biweekly-ish groceries. Meats with cuts I use and also vegetables I eat! And there's also food there to tapau home. There was also a Filipino bakery around the corner so I tapau-ed some stuff there too. My fav places to shop at: Vietnamese markets, Filipino markets #Food 📎 (2)

JAKARTA — Indonesian fisheries authorities have welcomed as “better than nothing” a new policy by neighboring Singapore that should in theory help stem the smuggling of lobster larvae out of Indonesian waters. The Singapore Food Agency (SFA) has since Oct. 1 required traders in the city-state who are reexporting live animals to other countries to […]

old lady in the neighborhood is listening to her favorite javanese lagu lama > she is 90 yrs old, a little bit deaf, and she still works in the garden everyday #tootsea #magASEAN

PHNOM PENH — A court in Cambodia has denied the requests of three activists from environmental group Mother Nature Cambodia to travel to Sweden to accept an international award. In a letter published Oct. 2 by Phnom Penh Municipal Court and posted publicly to Mother Nature Cambodia’s Facebook page, decrees the travel of the three […]

From Wikipedia:

The name Pontianak refers to a story about ghosts that people in West Kalimantan refer to as Pontianak (a ferocious female ghost in Malay); it was a ghosts' haunt until Syarif Abdurrahman Alkadrie and his army fought and expelled the ghosts who attacked them by firing cannons. He then built a mosque and a palace, exactly on the location of the ghosts' haunt, and settled there. The mosque and palace became the first buildings in the city, and to this day locals fire bamboo cannons on Ramadan and other holidays in memory of this.

JAKARTA WELCOMES YOU - We, Indonesia’s Civil Society Organizations, are honored and excited to welcome you to be part of this year’s ASEAN Civil Society Conference / ASEAN People’s Forum (ACSC/APF), which is going to be held on 1-3 September at Atma Jaya University, Jakarta. The theme of ACSC/APF 2023 is “Reclaiming safe spaces, restoring democracy and equity in Southeast Asia!” – this forum is a space to discuss and learn the situations of ASEAN and its member states through people’s lens and civil society’s perspectives, and co-create approaches as our collective contribution to develop the region to be more people-centered. Throughout the three-day program, we look forward to having active and inclusive participation of many civil society organizations, groups and individuals, learning from each other and building regional solidarity and movements.

From the link:
In Singapore and beyond, there has been a quickening of interest in the anticolonial and socialist struggle of the 50s and 60s after the publications of archival research by historian PJ Thum and of the Eisner-winning graphic novel The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye by Sonny Liew, among other works. The undisputed leader of this historical struggle was the student activist, trade unionist, and politician Lim Chin Siong (LCS), who organised the largest social movement in Singapore to fight for democracy, freedom, and justice. Although this movement ultimately failed, it opens a window into an alternative future for Singapore, Malaysia, and the rest of Asia—a window that creative writers with their imaginative powers can help us look at and through.

Deadline for submissions is 1 December 2023. There are also introductory material on Lim Chin Siong himself and the historical context he was in.

Unfortunately their twitter thread about Lim is not mirrored anywhere else, but if you like, here's the thread

The Philippines seeks to bolster its ability to address threats while underlining the need to strengthen ties with allies while pursuing an independent foreign policy, under a six-year national security policy published on Tuesday.

From the article:
Former health director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said Malaysia led the effort to list the drug.

“The ravidasvir listing on the WHO EML is another milestone for Malaysia in its journey of developing a cost-effective hepatitis C drug. It addresses healthcare access, affordability and equity, particularly in low- and middle-income countries.
Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah.

“This addition to the list would mean many more member states and civil society groups can gain access to this affordable medicine and eliminate hepatitis C by 2030,” Noor Hisham, now a board member of DNDi, told FMT.

DNDi, or Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative, is an international, not-for-profit research and development organisation.

The development of ravidasvir was initiated by Malaysia’s health ministry and DNDi, in partnership with Thailand’s health ministry, Médecins Sans Frontières, Presidio Pharmaceuticals, Pharco Pharmaceuticals and Pharmaniaga Berhad.

Malaysia approved the use of ravidasvir hydrochloride in June 2021.

The listing is historically significant for Malaysia and the world because the first highly effective hepatitis C drug, sofosbuvir, used to cost more than RM300,000 for a 12-week treatment.

cross-posted from: https://monyet.cc/post/143568

The country also has a large, diverse, and well-trained talent base that is capable of executing almost any job imaginable. In its most recent Southeast Animation Study, MDEC found that studios in Malaysia and Southeast Asia at large had employees with expertise in a wide range of fields including animators, modelers, compositors, designers, producers, cg specialists, vfx, and more

#SoutheastAsia #Malaysia #Animation

A video platform from Engage Media that seeks to highlight filmmakers and video content from the Asia Pacific region.

In this newsletter:

• Announcement of partnership with MULAT Documentary Guild (Philippines)
• interview with Herwin Cabasal, an advocacy filmmaker and the chair of the Department of Communication at Far Eastern University in the Philippines.
• Podcast guest: Numun Fund’s Information and Knowledge Systems Choreographer Syar S. Alia

And a few more highlighted videos and films!

Doublethink Lab and the China In The World network present the China Index, the first cross-regional project to objectively measure and visualize the People’s Republic of China (PRC)’s overseas influence through comparable data.

With much thanks to @inchg for his thread here

I'll be using this thread to share related links that're also in that thread

Featuring a guest post from the author, Solidaritas, Kate Walton focused specifically on amplifying stories about women's rights, gender, and feminism in the Asia Pacific.

Their own memories fading, former World War Two sex slaves seek justice in their twilight years.

Fascinating field notes from genuinely one of the most contested and policed spaces of public expression and art, slash fanfiction. The Chinese example here is well-observed, but to a large extent it happens here in Southeast Asia as well to varying degrees (e.g. IP bans of known fandom-heavy spaces are common)

Some species are protected in Indonesia, but the black market for them persists. Collectors who pay thousands of dollars for a specimen say only they truly know the butterflies’ value. The programme Undercover Asia finds out what is at stake.